Owen:

Hello and welcome to Message Makers. This is where we dive into the knowledge, insight and experience shaping the world of communications. Today I'm really pleased to be joined by Hannah Perselli from Roku. Welcome, Hannah. I really appreciate you joining us.

To give some context for anyone who doesn't know, can you tell us a little about Roku? What does the organisation do?

Hannah:

Roku is a leading streaming platform that connects people to the entertainment they love. The company powers streaming through devices, smart TVs and advertising solutions used by millions worldwide.

Owen:

So I might find a physical box that I can buy, or it might be embedded in my smart TV, and you power all of that?

Hannah:

Yes. In the UK, some of the shops where you'll find Roku products include Currys. You can find them on Amazon too, so they're pretty easy to get hold of.

Owen:

And it's a global organisation. How many people are in the organisation?

Hannah:

We are nearing 3,000 employees now. I haven't got an exact number, unfortunately. In the last two years, we've opened an office in India, in Bangalore too, which is exciting.

Owen:

A growing organisation. It sounds like things are moving fast. That's generally the way things go with tech companies, isn't it?

Hannah:

Definitely. To give some perspective, our India office when it first opened was 80 employees, and today we are over 300. It grew at a very intense level.

Finding variety and empathy in internal communications.

Owen:

When we caught up, we talked about your history and background. You started in journalism. What pulled you towards internal communications, and what from your journalism background do you call on most in your day-to-day work at Roku?

Hannah:

I'll start with why I went into internal comms. Employee comms is marketing for the organisation to employees, and I love that demand for information, experience and engagement.

For example, any negative feedback I receive on a piece of content is still a form of engagement. I always look at it as: at least that person took the time to interact with that content.

Internal comms also highlighted the nicer problems to have. You might have 150 people turn up for an event that you only catered for 50. That signals strong interest and demand. I don't see it as a negative; I see it as a positive.

In my previous roles in marketing and journalism, I never had that realisation or understanding of what internal comms could do for you and make you feel. That's how I've felt as my career has gone on.

Owen:

So it's that feedback loop and being able to see the impact you're making with the communications you're putting out there?

Hannah:

It's the feedback, for sure. No two days are the same. There's variety in internal comms. Every role I've had has involved different channels, different topics and different stakeholders.

The stakeholder piece has allowed me to build relationships with people who are completely different, while still achieving a good relationship and setting expectations for a campaign or project.

With journalism specifically, I got bored. Day in, day out, you'd go and film, edit and get your news package ready for the 6 pm news. That was all very exciting when I first started my career, fresh out of university, but as time went on, I needed variety and momentum to keep my interest.

Don't get me wrong: in internal comms, not every story is going to be fluffy. There are crisis communications and hard messages you have to put out there. But within internal comms, you can put them out with empathy and compassion. For me, journalism was missing that.

Bringing the right stakeholders into projects.

Owen:

You mentioned bringing the right partners together at the right time, across functions, and building your network. When we chatted before, you said you'd delivered four intranets throughout your career, and you've got the battle scars to prove it. You've launched an internal podcast as well.

I imagine your background in production and journalism has come in handy, but you can't deliver those projects without bringing in stakeholders from around the business. Talk us through how you've built that network and worked with different stakeholders to achieve those outcomes.

Hannah:

Of course. I try to avoid pulling everyone in at once. There's a right stage to bring in certain partners. For example, I always bring IT and cyber security partners in early, because with any new channel, we need to know whether the platform can integrate with our current platforms and whether we can technically use it.

What are the constraints, if there are any? I've been in a situation where there were none, which is a lovely feeling, I'm not going to lie. It's about getting their expertise before detailed communication plans happen for a new project or channel.

Connecting inclusion stories and employee experience.

Recently, I was trying to understand what's happening at the corporate level and bring a different perspective to it. For example, I created a quarterly diversity and inclusion series as part of the internal podcast, working with our diversity and inclusion team. It spreads awareness of our employee resource groups, which are really important to Roku.

Sometimes that content can be very raw and honest, which makes it powerful. Working with my partners helped make the series what it is today.

For Women's History Month, we had two presenters because I wanted to show two different angles. One was a female leader who openly shared her career journey and her fertility experience. The second was a male leader, exploring the importance of allyship and how we can better support Women of Roku, our employee resource group. For a project like that, those partners had to come in straight away.

More broadly, I've worked with workplace experience teams. They're the voice on the ground and help set up events. They become an important part of the content and channels because they create the physical employee experience.

When we do a global event, we promote it in our internal newsletter, and it becomes a whole global celebration rather than something for a specific office or location.

Owen:

You're so right about engaging with IT first. We create a lot of podcasts and do live streaming, digital and hybrid events for clients. With an external audience, you assume they can access anything that's accessible on the internet. But different clients have different systems and platforms they can use, and some are blocked.

Engaging with IT early makes sure the workflow from creation through distribution will work. With a public, external audience, you're not on the hook for tech support in the same way as with an internal audience. If it doesn't work for somebody internally, you're going to get a load of phone calls to the IT helpdesk.

Turning a stakeholder's no into a yes.

When we last spoke, you mentioned a story about stakeholder management and turning a really hard no into a yes over time. Could you talk us through the tactics you used to get that result?

Hannah:

At the time, I was working at a water company and we were building a new intranet. It was an all-singing, all-dancing platform that could do everything you could want for its time. But it was a significant investment, which led to high scrutiny.

My initial presentation involved gathering eight stakeholders and getting them to understand the employee benefit. Everyone in the room was on board except the finance director. His personality was very decisive: once he'd made his mind up, he didn't shift it easily. His approval was essential because he could have pulled the plug on the project. We needed the funding.

I went away and continued with the rest of the project. That included running roadshows across the organisation, speaking to employees in field and office-based roles, showcasing practical benefits of the intranet and building a strong overall case using real user insight. But I still had the finance director saying, 'No, this intranet is too expensive.'

I knew I needed to change my approach completely and pitch it in a way that spoke his language. I set up a meeting and shifted the focus from employee benefits to the financial rationale: why it cost what it did, the breakdown of investment areas and a clear justification for the spend.

I told myself, 'I need to stop trying to sell the vision, because he's not buying into that.' Giving him clarity, detail and transparency about cost, risks and value got me the green light. He approved the funding, and the project moved forward.

That was a really big learning milestone in my career. It goes back to stakeholder management not being one size fits all.

Launching a critical intranet during COVID-19.

Owen:

One story you told me when we caught up stuck with me, and I imagine it's going to give people chills. In a previous role at a company in the travel sector, you were launching one of your intranets. The previous intranet had been switched off, and the worst possible time for that transition was March 2020, right at the start of COVID, in a travel organisation.

Tell me how you managed that, because it sounds like an absolute perfect storm.

Hannah:

I was the project manager for the end-to-end implementation of a critical new intranet platform. It became critical because of the uncertain situation with COVID.

On day one, the COVID-19 crisis hit. The original, more strategic, long-term communication plan, which was a little fluffier, rapidly evolved into a business-critical approach. I had to create a crisis communication plan within 30 minutes and inform my project team of the new expectations from our stakeholders. Everything had to be delivered at pace.

We had to launch the intranet three weeks earlier than planned. I feel the decision to overcommunicate with my project team was the right one. They knew we had to deliver early and work around the clock. They knew there was no room for delays or teething issues, and that the platform had to function fully from day one.

Setting those expectations developed a relationship and synergy with my project team that worked amazingly.

Owen:

When you're working long days, around the clock, side by side, you've got to have that trust and honesty. You mentioned it was almost like a war room you set up to get it delivered.

Hannah:

Definitely.

Owen:

You delivered three weeks early, which is a quick turnaround. What changed for frontline teams, and what was the first signal it was working?

Hannah:

Even with the added pressure, we launched the intranet early and successfully, as our stakeholders expected. We achieved 98% workforce adoption on day one, according to our live data. The data started showing from the second we went live, so we knew it was working.

That was vital, because all the communications before that had been over email. Some employees in the field don't always read their email. We had to see the data working and the adoption rate going up in real time.

I've never felt relief like it. Knowing we'd delivered what was expected, but three weeks earlier than planned, was a real achievement. It was one of those moments where I thought, 'I'm glad it's over, and I never want to go through it again.' But I'm glad we were there and pulled it off. I couldn't have done it without the project team; they were amazing.

Making leadership more human through internal podcasts.

Owen:

You touched on a podcast. We're on a podcast, talking about a podcast: very meta. You have an internal podcast at Roku. What problem did you set out to solve with that channel?

Hannah:

The podcast launched in October of last year. It's called Remotely Interesting, the Roku podcast. The gap was connection between employees and senior leadership.

I wanted to create an informal internal channel that gave leaders space to answer business and career questions, with a personal touch too. We have strong internal channels, but a lot are quite structured and business-focused. I wanted a different angle with more of a human element, so employees could connect with it and engage with the content more naturally.

People were excited about the new channel. They were asking, 'Can I get it on my phone? I'd love to listen when I'm commuting, dropping the kids off at school, walking the dog or getting a coffee.' I thought that was a good angle to incorporate into our main communications plan.

I owe a lot to my manager for making the podcast possible. From the beginning, she trusted me to run with the idea and fully supported me in following this passion, even though neither of us knew what it would become. Let's put it this way: it's grown legs.

Producing podcasts and connecting internal channels.

Owen:

I'm a bit of a geek, so I'm interested in the production process. Is it audio, or audio and video? I presume your background in broadcast journalism helps with production. What are you using to record it, and how are you distributing it?

You mentioned engaging IT early, and I'm guessing they were an important stakeholder in getting those episodes out. Is it posted on your intranet? Can people access it on their mobile devices? Talk us through the technical production side, if you're happy to.

Hannah:

Sure. As part of this, I've taken on a leadership role. I'm managing a member of our team who's early in their career. Delegating some of my original tasks has freed up time to produce the podcast and give it more focus, because it needs it.

The episodes are biweekly. I'll ask someone whether they'd like to be a guest. If they say yes, I'll create a script as a base for the conversation. If they're happy with it, we arrange a recording date and record through Hypecast, a podcast platform. Sometimes I do it in person, and sometimes in a format similar to what we're doing today.

It's all recorded in the platform. I download it and edit it myself. I've even got my own theme intro and outro, which are part of the podcast branding. I love it because it's on beat and creates a buzz before the episode starts.

In editing, I make an introduction voiceover to set the scene: who I'm interviewing and the topics. The music plays, and then it goes straight into the recording. I also do an outro, because a big part of this is connecting our podcast with other internal channels.

At the end, I'll say goodbye to the guest, the music plays, and I do another voiceover: 'Check out more detail of so-and-so doing a demo in our tech talk,' or, 'Check them out at our all-hands, where they'll be talking about X, Y and Z.'

It's collaboration across our internal channels and connecting the dots, which makes a nice, seamless cycle. That was a big part of the strategy: bring everything together and don't miss a trick.

Using AI to support communications work.

Owen:

One of your guests created an AI employee accessible through Slack, which sounds incredibly futuristic. We can't have a conversation about comms without touching on AI. Talk to me about Roku's AI employee and what it's helping the business achieve.

Hannah:

Roku is encouraging everyone in the business to explore the AI tools available to us. One thing that came out of a brainstorm with a senior software engineer was an AI employee integrated into Slack.

At the moment, the best way to describe it is like an intern taking on requests from everyone in the organisation. Developing it further so it can keep up with that capacity is something being looked at for the future.

I had the senior software engineer on the podcast, and we talked about who gave it its name, why he created it and who it was originally for. AI is changing every day, so this was a real eye-opener. Everyone is interested in this AI employee and how it can help in their roles.

Owen:

Is this AI employee a comms channel, comms support, or something more general?

Hannah:

It's everything. For example, I recently did a podcast survey. I asked it to analyse my Excel documents from a quantitative and qualitative data perspective: 'Give me a deep dive into the analytics and pull out the high-level messages and actions I can take from this data.'

It was thorough. It created a PDF and could create a PowerPoint if I needed to present it to stakeholders. It did that within ten minutes, compared with me taking an hour, an hour and a half, or even longer to analyse the data. It's made my role much more efficient in terms of how quickly I can get things done.

Tailoring both content and channels across regions.

Owen:

You've recently visited the offices in China and India. Versioning for different territories and audiences must be an issue in such a large organisation. How do you approach those different audiences and languages?

Hannah:

When I was creating the internal newsletter from start to finish, we had three versions. That gave me an understanding that the content needed to be tailored to these different audiences. It couldn't just be a tick-box exercise; it had to enhance engagement and make people in all offices feel part of the Roku culture.

One thing I've always done is keep the target audience in mind. Use the correct punctuation, grammar and tone. Put topics that are more important to certain audiences at the top, and rearrange the news items. That's important.

One of the most interesting things we recently found about the India audience was that they don't like email unless it's specifically related to their job. We asked what else we could do to increase our open and click rates in that region.

We created a clickable PDF that replicated the newsletter's format. Instead of sending it by email, we shared it in Slack with all our India employees. We've already seen a massive increase in open and click rates just by changing the newsletter from email to Slack.

My learning is: tailor the content, grammar, tone and specific topics, but also tailor the channel, because the channel matters too.

Creating an internal podcast employees value.

Owen:

As we start to wrap up, is there a piece of work you're really proud of that changed behaviour or perception? What made it land?

Hannah:

I'm really proud of the internal podcast, seeing it grow from an idea into the channel it is today. The amount of positive feedback I've received is incredible. People come over to my desk in the office and say, 'That episode was amazing. Well done.'

I've never had such open, positive feedback throughout my career. It's a great feeling to know you're producing content people engage with and find value in. That's really hard to find.

What makes it meaningful for me is storytelling in an informal way that resonates with people.

Owen:

If someone watching or listening has been inspired to start their own internal podcast, what three pieces of advice would you give them to kick-start their own channel?

Hannah:

First, start with the human, not the format. Before anything else, focus on making it feel more human, especially now, with AI changing every day.

Second, make leaders comfortable being themselves. A big part of the success of the internal podcast I host is creating the right environment for senior leaders, making them comfortable enough to open up.

Third, design for consistency, not perfection. In some episodes, I've missed taking out a cough or someone drinking water. I even said to my manager that maybe I should create a blooper episode with all the funny little moments.

Owen:

That's your Christmas episode?

Hannah:

Exactly. I don't focus on being perfect. Keep it simple, repeatable and easy to deliver.

Building connection through employee-led podcast content.

Owen:

What are you testing next? What's next for you?

Hannah:

I'd love to make more people throughout the organisation feel connected. From a podcast point of view, I want to explore regional hosts, do more employee-led content and interview people I haven't before, whether they're senior leaders or early in their careers.

I want to shape the conversations differently and take on employee feedback. I don't want employees to think I won't implement the feedback they've given. I want to say, 'You said, we did.' That's definitely something that's next.

Owen:

I can't wait to see or hear it. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you, and I appreciate your openness. It's been a really interesting conversation. Thank you so much for joining.

Hannah:

Thank you. It's been an honour to be a guest on your podcast. I love it.

Owen:

Maybe one day you can interview me on your podcast, even though I don't work for Roku. I don't know how that would work.

Hannah:

If I ever branch out to an external platform, I'll definitely message you.

Owen:

That's it for this episode of Message Makers. Thanks again to Hannah for joining me and sharing her insight. If you've got any questions, ideas or suggestions for future guests, we'd love to hear from you. We'll be back soon with more views from across the world of communications.